Clir makes noise in France

VANCOUVER, BC: Canadian optimization software company, Clir Renewables has secured its first project in France following the recent opening of its first office in Europe. The client, a GW scale owner-operator in the region has chosen Clir to support optimizing the performance of their current wind portfolio.

Having considered other providers in the market, Clir was chosen by the owner specifically due to the system’s ability to provide actionable items to increase production and hold the OEM to account.

France offers an excellent opportunity for Clir Renewables to expand its reach within Europe. At the end of 2017, France Energie Eolienne reported there was 13.5 GW of onshore wind installed. In 2018 the French Government released their Multiannual Energy Programme (programmation pluriannuelle de l’énergie, PPE) laying out their energy transition to a cleaner energy mix, including plans to triple installed onshore wind capacity by 2030. This commitment to onshore wind shows the market is strong and will grow steadily over the coming decade.

Craig McCall, Director of Europe “In recent years we have seen a shift in owners focusing more on their operational assets in France. A significant contributor to this shift is due to the recently imposed regulatory requirements surrounding noise impact in 2011. The change allows the undertaking of a new noise impact assessment at any point either as a result of a residential complaint or ICPE inspection. This leaves many owners exposed as non-compliance of a wind farm can be revealed after several years of operation.

It’s great to see a large owner-operator in the region having the confidence to bring on Clir despite having their own extremely competent team of engineers. Our view as a business has always been to provide clients with the tools to conduct analysis quickly and at scale to optimize their assets.

Using Clir allows owners to bypass time-consuming analysis by clearly quantifying the impact of all potential areas of underperformance. This allows their technical teams to focus on implementing the performance improvement measures that have the highest return on investment, as opposed to getting caught up trying to make sense of the poorly structured data provided by the OEM’s.”

About Craig McCall: Craig has over six years’ experience in the renewable energy industry and most recently led a world-leading renewable energy technical consultants Optimisation and Control service line. To date, Craig has been involved in more than 50 wind farm optimization projects across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.